are curly, knotted and very slippy, and, although im not eating all that many of them, they are ever present in their metaphorical state. Ive had encounters that make me want to record and replay and freeze and unpack and look into the pixels. So many conversations seem to be like this (probably all if i paid enough attention), with serving vso volunteers whose speech is thick with the kind of knowledge that comes only from experience and the sometimes troubling interactions i observe them having with their 'volunteer assistants', local counterparts who are not so well paid or, without doubt, by vso or by the offices of education, respected; somehow breathless meetings with the directors of Cambodia's provincial and district offices of education, my soon-to-be bosses, 50something year old ex-Khmer Rouge guys who have bought and dealt their way into serious power, who i approach with an enduring feeling of how very unlikely it seems that we should ever meet, let alone work together...
Issues and undercurrents and multiple, uncolliding expectations seem tangled in such a complex embrace Im not sure all the patient anthropology in the world could straighten them.
The noodles curl with thoughts and slip off the fork with the twists of time. 5 or so weeks into being here for at least a year have brought many different flavours and feelings. Starting a blog has been tricky in quickly changing times; its felt difficult having so much to digest, crap internet connections, overheated fatigue and a sense of being FAR AWAY and not always on the articulacy button to try to express. starting's hard, as with anything, and having finally got something written here i hope some kind of newtonian law might mean itll be easier from this point to sometimes share what im seeing, doing or chewing unsuredly through.
POODLES
rhymes with noodles. It was an innocently random addition to this title....
and i didnt even really like poodles, the only ones ive met being Kristal Chow at primary school's little yappy one and teenage boyfriend Chris Matcham's giant galloping one (both snouty snarly big Beckenham hounds)
UNTIL
(imagine insert of photo thats taking too long and seems to have failed)
A Cambodian poodle, small soft and mildly acrobatic, perpetually cheerful, bright of face, and continuouslly motional of tail. Missing the hard and jumping trademarks of scabs, fleas and tick-lumps that every other Cambodian dog ive befriended, its curly bright form was like a harbinger of a new home. And, having decided that meeting a poodle in Cambodia after naming a blog like this was too fortuitous an opportunity to miss, i knew Id take the house before i even saw its lovely wide wooden balcony with the rivers breeze on it or met the lovely warm family who live below.
Home of mine from 7th november: Battambong. Town of strangely visceral buzz (hm not sure visceral even means this), people busy everywhere, cleaning streets and mending pavements (unlike anyway elese Ive been), ngos everywhere but many of them seeming Cambodian run, including circus schools and street-kid trainee bakeries and furniture makers, peculiar statues of gorillas and dinosaurs, and a thoroughly unexpected hip hop scene (though could be much more Khmer rapping and the gigantic club has big empty walls ripe for some visuals - will visit the circus schools new animation team and ask them what they reckon to workshops making some creations). Lovely riverside, aerobics at dawn, fantastic assistants in my team who i hope to make good mates with... from the moment of entering, only confirmed by poodle, battambangs struck me firmly as a great place to be. All visitors welcome.
RICE
lots and lots of it
NICE
yes. it often is, being here. sometimes because im sipping beer by sunset on the mekong watching kids play badminton and hakisac, or because its like being in a film thats not been scripted yet but is familiar in its exotic, sticky-skinned, motos-and-rickshaws-in-the-rain, houses-on-stilts and palm-silhouette ways.
its also peculiar, tiring, overwhelming, especially to be the rich one in every scenario. im struggling to navigate this dynamic in a way that feels honest and grounded because although there are so many laughs and some quite funny strange games that make everyone just be where they are for a bit, this background skew of material possibilities, that not everyone in the interaction has, feels sometimes so pressing. bad health is so obvious here, in the way people cough, in the struggles people have to support their families, in the massive lumps on peoples stomachs or the tautness of their faces. and the endlessly uncomfortable dogs are of course only those at the bottom of the pile. and ive met people who simply cant change their job, however much eagerness and talent and energy they have, or support their children to go to school, or even get a girlfriend (one said because no one would go out with a teacher as they get nowhere near enough money to support even one person on).
so. its difficult. but im glad to begin to realise it, out of books, out of tidy arguments or the handwringing distance of home. i hope it motivates something good.
pip pip
love love
alixoxoxoxooxooxoxooox
